I realized yesterday that we are almost out of printer paper. What a crisis! We go through a LOT of paper.
We spent some time looking in nooks and crannies, and have found enough to get by today. We hope.
Obviously, a trip to Sam's Club has risen in importance so that we can end this unsettling and unnerving state of affair.s
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Miscellaneous Pictures
Yep, I had a birthday.
He is too cute sometimes.
A manly moment.
Funny thing, he is very cute when he is awake, too!
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Fall Festival, Part 2
AMAZING bouncy house!
Naomi on a big pony.
Ice cream Sundaes
Angela on the bull.
Fall Festival
Our church had a fall festival last weekend.
Angela on a pony.
Lydia. She loves horses!
Isaac riding the pretend bull.
Naomi (or Lydia?) going up the climbing wall.
More pony riding! (Miriam)
More pics later. 2 littles on my lap make typing difficult.
Friday, October 26, 2012
Finances: Clothing Part 2
I forgot to mention another life lesson from my childhood years in South America.
We lived in the rain forest where it was hot and steamy. Our missionary village, Tumi Chucua, was attached to a village of native Bolivians, and we interacted fairly often though the language difference was a barrier. We spoke English, they spoke Spanish. And while we took Spanish in school, I never learned to speak well.
Anyway, that was a digression. The Bolivians were poor. We weren't rich by American standards, but we were rich compared to them.
Their clothing was ragged and usually gray. The gray thing seemed weird to me but I THINK that the clothes were gray because the dye washed out of them due to repeated washings. Let me assure you that the Bolivians were not "well dressed" in the American sense of the word.
I suspect each person had one or at most 2 sets of clothing. Mostly they just wore the same clothes day in and day out.
I look at our closets and our drawers and I am amazed at how many clothes we have.
I read about people from even 200 years ago in our country who had to spin their own thread and weave their own fabric. For them, every garment was precious.
I think my exposure to truly poor people helps me realize that none of us need as many clothes as we have. We have many clothes and I'll talk later about why we have many clothes while spending relatively little. But when I get "bored" with my clothes and think, "I just want something new", I remember the Bolivians of Tumi Chucua.
We lived in the rain forest where it was hot and steamy. Our missionary village, Tumi Chucua, was attached to a village of native Bolivians, and we interacted fairly often though the language difference was a barrier. We spoke English, they spoke Spanish. And while we took Spanish in school, I never learned to speak well.
Anyway, that was a digression. The Bolivians were poor. We weren't rich by American standards, but we were rich compared to them.
Their clothing was ragged and usually gray. The gray thing seemed weird to me but I THINK that the clothes were gray because the dye washed out of them due to repeated washings. Let me assure you that the Bolivians were not "well dressed" in the American sense of the word.
I suspect each person had one or at most 2 sets of clothing. Mostly they just wore the same clothes day in and day out.
I look at our closets and our drawers and I am amazed at how many clothes we have.
I read about people from even 200 years ago in our country who had to spin their own thread and weave their own fabric. For them, every garment was precious.
I think my exposure to truly poor people helps me realize that none of us need as many clothes as we have. We have many clothes and I'll talk later about why we have many clothes while spending relatively little. But when I get "bored" with my clothes and think, "I just want something new", I remember the Bolivians of Tumi Chucua.
Monday, October 22, 2012
Finances: Clothing
I just looked at our budget. We are on track to spend less than $1500 this year on clothing. For a family of 10.
I'm guessing that some people think that is high, and many people think that is low.
I don't remember a lot of things that happened 25 years ago but I do remember the following incident.
I was at Michigan Technological University at a Women in Engineering summer camp. A female engineer sat down with us one day to talk about "budgets and money." She showed us a budget, and her clothing budget was about $200/month. For her, alone. In 1986.
One of the girls with me said, "ONLY $200/month??" The lady smiled and said, "Well, this is just after you have your wardrobe largely established."
I was shocked. My parents were middle class but didn't have a lot of extra money, and NO WAY did we spend $200/month/person on clothing. When I heard that conversation, I wondered if I too would spend lots of money on clothing as the years went by.
The answer is, obviously, NO.
Truth is, I REALLY dislike clothes shopping. It is really almost peculiar how much I hate buying clothes!
There are probably several factors.
1. I like being comfortable way more than I like being fashionable.
2. I lived in the jungles of South America for 3 years as a child, where moth and rust destroyed though no thieves broke in and stole. (That's a paraprase of a Bible verse in the gospels somewhere :-).) Actually, mildew and mud attacked our clothing more often than moths. Why was that important? Well, I learned that getting attached to clothing tended to be a disappointing experience. I would occasionally get excited about some clothes only to have them develop holes or grow mildew.
3. I had hypoglycemic episodes while shopping. That sounds weird. My paternal grandmother loved me dearly and we spent quite a bit of time together considering we never lived within 100 miles of one another (once I was older than 6 or 7, anyway.) She was a young adult during the Great Depression and was very frugal. When we went shopping for clothes, she headed straight for the sales racks. She was SO careful. Due to her generosity, my parents didn't have to buy many clothes for me during my teen years because my grandmother bought me so many quality, low cost items.
Now all that sounds good and it was. However, there was one semi-comical aspect to our shopping trips. My grandmother and I (and my aunt, who also has excellent taste in clothes and an eye for bargains) would eat a hearty breakfast and go off shopping. By hearty, I mean we'd have toast and cereal and the like. About 11 a.m., I would start feeling "hungry". It wasn'really hunger, it was hypoglycemia. I had those episodes throughout my teen and young adult years frequently. I would start feeling incredibly shaky and just AWFUL. I felt like I was going to fall down in a faint. I felt like I could eat the entire Earth and have the Moon for dessert. At the time, I believed that was what "hunger" felt like.
In my mid 30's, I was diagnosed with diabetes. I started measuring my blood sugar and realized that when I felt that awful shaky feeling, I was dropping low with my blood sugar. So it wasn't hunger, which I could have handled, it was hypoglycemia.
The long and the short of it is that while I enjoyed some aspects of our shopping trips, my most vivid memory was getting faint from hypoglycemia. My grandmother and aunt had no intention of starving me of course, and we always had a nice lunch at some point, but it was often later than noon and those couple hours when I felt bad are branded in my memory. It is sad that none of us knew what was going on, as I could have carried some nuts or other high protein snacks in my purse and avoided the whole thing.
I guess this is Finances: Clothing, Part 1. I'll write a Part 2 one of these days talking about how we keep our clothing budget down.
I'm guessing that some people think that is high, and many people think that is low.
I don't remember a lot of things that happened 25 years ago but I do remember the following incident.
I was at Michigan Technological University at a Women in Engineering summer camp. A female engineer sat down with us one day to talk about "budgets and money." She showed us a budget, and her clothing budget was about $200/month. For her, alone. In 1986.
One of the girls with me said, "ONLY $200/month??" The lady smiled and said, "Well, this is just after you have your wardrobe largely established."
I was shocked. My parents were middle class but didn't have a lot of extra money, and NO WAY did we spend $200/month/person on clothing. When I heard that conversation, I wondered if I too would spend lots of money on clothing as the years went by.
The answer is, obviously, NO.
Truth is, I REALLY dislike clothes shopping. It is really almost peculiar how much I hate buying clothes!
There are probably several factors.
1. I like being comfortable way more than I like being fashionable.
2. I lived in the jungles of South America for 3 years as a child, where moth and rust destroyed though no thieves broke in and stole. (That's a paraprase of a Bible verse in the gospels somewhere :-).) Actually, mildew and mud attacked our clothing more often than moths. Why was that important? Well, I learned that getting attached to clothing tended to be a disappointing experience. I would occasionally get excited about some clothes only to have them develop holes or grow mildew.
3. I had hypoglycemic episodes while shopping. That sounds weird. My paternal grandmother loved me dearly and we spent quite a bit of time together considering we never lived within 100 miles of one another (once I was older than 6 or 7, anyway.) She was a young adult during the Great Depression and was very frugal. When we went shopping for clothes, she headed straight for the sales racks. She was SO careful. Due to her generosity, my parents didn't have to buy many clothes for me during my teen years because my grandmother bought me so many quality, low cost items.
Now all that sounds good and it was. However, there was one semi-comical aspect to our shopping trips. My grandmother and I (and my aunt, who also has excellent taste in clothes and an eye for bargains) would eat a hearty breakfast and go off shopping. By hearty, I mean we'd have toast and cereal and the like. About 11 a.m., I would start feeling "hungry". It wasn'really hunger, it was hypoglycemia. I had those episodes throughout my teen and young adult years frequently. I would start feeling incredibly shaky and just AWFUL. I felt like I was going to fall down in a faint. I felt like I could eat the entire Earth and have the Moon for dessert. At the time, I believed that was what "hunger" felt like.
In my mid 30's, I was diagnosed with diabetes. I started measuring my blood sugar and realized that when I felt that awful shaky feeling, I was dropping low with my blood sugar. So it wasn't hunger, which I could have handled, it was hypoglycemia.
The long and the short of it is that while I enjoyed some aspects of our shopping trips, my most vivid memory was getting faint from hypoglycemia. My grandmother and aunt had no intention of starving me of course, and we always had a nice lunch at some point, but it was often later than noon and those couple hours when I felt bad are branded in my memory. It is sad that none of us knew what was going on, as I could have carried some nuts or other high protein snacks in my purse and avoided the whole thing.
I guess this is Finances: Clothing, Part 1. I'll write a Part 2 one of these days talking about how we keep our clothing budget down.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Sharpie Markers, Alcohol, and Shirts
The older 4 girls made shirts using colored Sharpies and alcohol. This is a variation of making tie dye shirts, but it is not as messy.
The basic procedure is to make pictures with Sharpie markers, then drip alcohol on the marker pictures with alcohol. The alcohol dissolves the ink and makes it blur out. Then we tossed the shirts into the dryer for 15 minutes to set the ink.
Art lesson!
The basic procedure is to make pictures with Sharpie markers, then drip alcohol on the marker pictures with alcohol. The alcohol dissolves the ink and makes it blur out. Then we tossed the shirts into the dryer for 15 minutes to set the ink.
I think Miriam doesn't like the smell of the alcohol!
Art lesson!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)